On Tuesday, March 22, my husband and I landed at the Brussels airport. This voyage is in my DNA.

My parents moved the family to Brussels in July of 1964 when I was six months old. We stayed there until 1967, just before the last of my six siblings was born. In 1992 the last of the six, my sister Tori, moved back to Brussels. For more than 20 years I have adored visiting my sister and her family. A bonus is the sweetness of Belgium calling my artistic eye.

The bombs went off at 8 a.m. that morning, one minute before we landed.

“There has been a security breach and we will have to wait to disembark until they have secured the gate,” the captain tells us.

That’s all we knew at the moment. At 8:03 a.m. I call my sister’s cell phone but there is no answer. She is supposed to pick us up at the airport. At 8:04 a.m. I call her home and briefly speak with my brother in law. But then Tori rings me and I switch calls.

“Lisa, a bomb went off, people are dead, it happened just now. People are dead, I can see them,” she yells.

I turn to my husband Brendan and whisper to him: “Tori is here at the airport. She said there has been a bomb. She said people have died.”

As the horrific moments unfold before my little sister’s eyes, I wish with all my heart that I could be with her to hold her and comfort her. But we are trapped in the plane, stranded on the tarmac, and the only thing I can do is stay on the phone, listening to her as she makes quick decisions about where to go, how to be safe, and whether to go home or stay and wait for us. In the background I can hear the sirens of ambulances arriving on the scene.

The plane has a calm, eerie feeling. The captain returns to the intercom: “Some of you may know by now, a bomb went off in the airport terminal. We will be staying in the plane for at least another hour until they decide how to proceed. I can assure you this is the safest place right now.”

This information about our safety on the plane is no consolation to me while my little sister is out there amidst all the chaos. Will another bomb go off?

“Please just go home Tori,” I say. “Be with your family and we will figure it out.”

“No, I am not leaving you,” she says. “I am staying.”

To conserve our phone power, we decide to communicate only when we have something new to report. Some of our communications via text went like this:

“Tori, the pilot said it will be a while. Not sure how long. Captain said police need bandwidth, may not be able to text.”

“Still here.”

“Deplaning to buses moving to a hanger nearby, will keep you posted”

“Okay, still here.”

Finally we board a shuttle bus and arrive at a humongous hanger where four other jumbo jet loads of dazed passengers stand around in a calm and organized manner. A man holds a bullhorn, but he never uses it. The hundreds of half asleep transatlantic passengers move quietly and quickly to a location behind the hanger. It is a narrow street between two buildings.

In seconds, Brendan and I realize that despite the best efforts of the airline and the airport to support us, we are on our own. We can also see there are no passport control or customs officials. It is a complete breach of security. Knowing my sister is within walking distance we step over a guardrail and simply walk away. Still texting, Tori assures me we are very near each other.

“Just keep walking, follow the people, follow the people,” she writes.

We follow the pilgrimage of people walking through the chaos of police and army ambulances rushing about. Tori is waiting at a rotary just at the edge of Zaventem, the town where the Brussels airport is located. She stands there with hundreds of family members also waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. Tori and I hug and then Brendan joins in and the three of us hold on to each other tightly not wanting to let go.

The days after March 22 flowed into each other. In the Belgian countryside we tried to process the events as a family and as individuals. For me, shielding myself from the details of the bombings was the best way to keep moving. I focused on seeing my sister again, her husband and my sweet nieces. I went to see the girls ride their new horse, picked them up from school, played games, ate chocolates and ate more chocolate. The girls also felt the effects of the bombing. Their school changed security protocols and the classes began having conversations about the current state of affairs. Innocence interrupted.

A week later, Brendan and I took an Easter trip to Nice. Because the Brussels airport was still closed, we had to drive across the border to France, to an airport in Lille, a place we had never been and were not expecting to visit. On the plane, as it gained altitude and my husband sat close to me reading a book, a stream of tears started. It was in that moment that so many questions rose up with no way to push them back to the place from which they came.

Why all the loss; the loss of innocence, of trust, of faith? Why the loss of freedom, why all the fear? But mostly, why all the death?

I look over to my husband, tears slowly subsiding, and my thoughts wander away from the bombings, away from the questions to which I have no answers and back to one I can answer.

I will come back to Belgium to visit my sister soon, very soon.

Lisa (L.A.) Brown is a photographer. She lives in Edgartown.